Don't blame the unions ... blame the lawmakers in Harrisburg

Mr. Thomas Haas ... you stated that you were taught “if we make a mistake, to correct it.” Well, you made a few mistakes in your article.

First and foremost, taxpayers have no claim to the private payments and accounts made by teachers. This is not taxpayers’ money, this is the money workers paid from their wages and it belongs. Second, your taxes are not going up “just” because of the pensions. Other issues, like construction, special education, medical benefits and for-profit private school payments are also contributing to the escalation. Next, if the solution were as simple as you suggest it would have been done by now, but one of the things you overlook ... which is extremely important ... is that the legislators are part of this same system. So, the difficulty is not getting legislators to vote to change employees benefits, but rather, that they must change their own benefits at the same time.

You referred to pensions in the private sector that had to be modified because they were “overly generous.” The private sector pensions were not overly generous, they were underfunded in the exact same way the public sector pensions have been underfunded. In the private sector many companies simply shifted to pay profits before they paid their obligations and then claimed they didn’t have enough funds left to pay their obligations. Many of these pension systems went bankrupt and then the taxpayers had to bail them out with the federally funded pension insurance.

You also blame the “generous formula” the unions pushed for as part of the problem. Well, that generous recalculation in 2002 under the Ridge administration was part of the problem, but it was not generated by the unions, it was pushed by the Legislature and the administration. Just to be clear, while the employees did get a generous recalculation of 25 percent, the legislators actually doubled that to 50 percent for themselves. So don’t blame that one on the unions, please.

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The biggest issue that led to our current crisis that you failed to mention is that former Gov. Rendell failed to pay even a modest payment into the system for eight years and instead shifted that obligated money into corporate welfare to build a convention center and numerous sports stadiums around the state and thereby subsidizing people who were already billionaires with the money that was obligated by contract to fund the pensions. Had he even made modest payments during his full eight years in office the system would have recovered from the Great Recession and be nearly solvent today even with the new multiplies. This is the true heart of the problem.

All of that being said, I do agree serious and dramatic changes need to be made. First, take the legislators and the employees back to the multiplier that was in place in 2001. Begin this in 2016.

This gives current employees and legislators an opportunity to retire now and maintain their current multiplier. After all, when it went up it impacted all of the current employees and legislators so it should be the same going down.

The second move would be to pay the actuarial cost every single year going forward. Right now Gov. Corbett wants to once again delay payments which will only compound the problem. These two moves combined would be enough to bring solvency back to the current system. Then, if you want to make changes for new employees ... fine. Set up a system for all new employees AND legislators. It is time for legislators to take a leadership role and vote immediately to roll back the multiplier for them and all administrators and managers not covered by a contract. Then you have REAL ammunition to go to the unions and say we lead the way and now you must take the same cuts. The problem here doesn’t reside with the unions who have strong leadership, it resides with the administration and legislators who have no leadership and are too used to lining their own pockets and taking money from billionaires in exchange for corporate welfare.